A drama that explores faith in a provocative but more conventional manner — Victoria-based filmmaker Connor Gaston’s The Devout — walked off with the prize for best Canadian feature.

The awards were announced during the End of Festival bash marking the end of the 10-day festival that showcased 160 features, documentaries, shorts and animated films.

The prize for best documentary went to Andrew Marchand-Boddy and Jean-Sebastien Francoeur for The Roots Remain, their moving and visually striking portrait of Fonki, a Montreal-raised graffiti artist of Cambodian descent. While chronicling the charismatic artist’s therapeutic attempts to memorialize victims of the Cambodian genocide, the film is also a hopeful plea from the younger generation for Cambodian renewal.

Amanda Strong and Bracken Hanuse Corlett collected the best animated short award for Mia’, their eight-minute film in which a young indigenous artist paints scenes rooted in her people’s supernatural history.

Stacey Ashworth won the Metropol Audience Favourite Short award for No Breath Play, her 13-minute film observing a reclusive woman’s botched experiment with BDSM (Bondage Domination Sadism Masochism).

Tanna, the Australian feature set in the South Pacific island of Vanuatu, received the Cineplex Entertainment Audience Favourite Award. The film observes the troubling impact of inter-tribal warfare on a young girl’s relationship with a tribal chief’s grandson, and their moral dilemma when she is betrothed as part of a peace deal. It made its Canadian premiere and was presented by the non-profit Victoria-Vanuatu Physician Project.

The Beijing Film Academy graduate flew in from China with the film’s star Haoran Xiao and crew for the film’s world première last Monday at Cineplex Odeon.

The new award, was introduced to honour outstanding achievements that capture the essence of a unique society, said festival spokeswoman Fulya Ozkul.

Christelle Alde, a grade 11 student at Claremont Secondary School, won the FilmCAN Sr. student competition senior category award for Brainwashed, her short about how advertisements “brainwash” viewers.